Perpetuus

by TheMask   Jul 5, 2015


Looking around the war torn scene nothing but bullets and explosions meet my eyes
My friends and foes dying left and right

All I do is look on
I should feel something
I should cry, lose my mind, anything but I don't
I just walk on by like it's normal

I see bullets flying towards me I smile and welcome them with open arms
The bliss of dying is all I cherish now
I close my eyes and relish in the pain
The feeling of being alive for a moment the adrenaline pumping through my veins
Seconds later the feelings gone replaced by emptiness

I open my eyes and sit up
I see everyone who has died
Laughing and smiling as they go about their day

I look at the calendar it's the same day as always
It never changes in this purgatory I live in

I envy them as they know nothing
That they'll die in mere moments
At least they can live their last moments smiling
I can no longer after seeing them die countless times over

I go through the routine again and again
I suit up
I pick up the rifle I've named perpetuus
I walk out and looked at the unchanging field
Only holding for a tomorrow to come

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Latest Comments

  • 8 years ago

    by Once an Angel

    The free form kind of frazzled form of this poem worked so well with the content/topic, and hooked me from the beginning. I think the matter-of-fact tone here is the only way we can talk about things as hellish as warm because otherwise words fail. Battle fields are robbed of sense, and words we use to make sense of the senseless. It hurt to read this poem, but I think it's supposed to. Like, I want to fix it, I want this not to be real, but I can't and I know that is not how life works. All I can do is honor this pain and wittiness it's reality, doing my best to help heal it wherever I find it. I don't know if this is your story, or another's. In some respects it doesn't matter, because these are your words for it, and that is the mattering part just now.

    It is striking how the whole poem is kind of about this repetitious trap that goes on day in and day out, and yet, at the end it says, "Only holding for a tomorrow to come." A tomorrow, but not the repetitious tomorrow. A tomorrow that feels like a tomorrow? Or is this that the person wants to live into tomorrow, even if tomorrow will look like today it still means living? I am less likely to think it is the latter because so much of the poem has an attitude of being done and inviting death -

    "I see bullets flying towards me I smile and welcome them with open arms
    The bliss of dying is all I cherish now
    I close my eyes and relish in the pain."

    Though I am sure it is possible to feel both things since feelings rarely make sense. We can want to stay alive and long for death simultaneously.

    I have done a poor job articulating it, but thank you for this poem. It was bravely written.

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